We all headed down to Japanese all you can eat buffet in Kaohsiung in the south of the island and one of the first things we did when we got there was book in for lunch at famous Japanese place 翰品酒店高雄- 品日式料理.
It was super busy and you need to book before you go. And then you need to get there 30 mins early so you can pick up your booking tickets and then you need go to a different line to get into the restaurant. It’s a bit complicated but this is not an unusual protocol in Asia, apparently.
Once we got in, the scale of the operation was impressive and the quality of the food was very high indeed.
I started with nigiri:
I think this was seared scallop, salmon and hamachi? It was very good.
Incidentally, I did wonder how they could serve nigiri so fast to such a high quality and I took a picture some hours later of a chef preparing next service:
The logistics to make this place work are heavy: you need to work out likely nigiri needed during a service and then make up the slack for the next run of guests. And be accurate, otherwise wastage costs will be insane!
Other highlights included:
Fish liver with some weird bobbly fruit thing. This was really super nice. Smooth and creamy and every other metaphorical cliche I can throw at it. And beside it is poached egg of some sort. This was very good too!
Aside from sushi and whatnot, there’s also grilled things:
I didn’t try this, but the point is they exist. And its handy to know if you want to visit.
The desserts were very good too:
And chocolate desserts!
I can’t remember what I had but it was many-er. In fact our table had ‘quite a lot of stuff’:
FYI drinks are free – including beer and some dodgy cocktails. So you can get mildly drunk for the cost of the ticket which is about £30 or TWD1200.
In the evening we went to the obligatory night market where the mother in law suggested I have this:
It was some offal thing but it tasted awful. Not the first or the last time I will use that joke.
The next day it was breakfast in Kaohsiung and round from the hotel was a small establishment full of stuff mostly made from offcuts:
I had vermicelli noodles with chicken broth (top middle). Then I think next to it is some intestine thing which was actually decent; quite fatty and didn’t have that awful intestine/tripe taste you often encounter.
And then the last image was pork knuckle which was fairly fatty and inedible IMHO but the flavour was decent. Just the texture was very bony and chewy.
In the evening we went out to a famous noodle joint Minba where they make their own noodles:
We ordered:
Top left: mushroom, chicken and leak soup; top right: dumplings; below them: tofu in spicy broth; bottom: deep fried spring rolls with beef and lettuce.
The dumplings were of a very high quality and very tasty and the tofu in spicy broth was rich and hot (as it should be). The deep fried spring rolls were excellent too. Soup was a bit meh.
And that’s days 9 and 10. Plenty more to go as I get round to writing them up. If I’ve gotten stuff wrong or if you have comments, let me know!
Another goddam foodblog 